The other day I was checking out a webcam at a local ski resort, and wanted to see what an entire day’s worth of shots looked like played in a movie. I’m sure there are apps out there that do this sort of thing, and might even be an easier way of doing this. Regardless, I decided to have a play.
Below is a simple VB Script file (sorry windowless folks) that will download and save an image to your hard drive. It will save the images in the same directory the script is running.
Dim imageURL
imageURL = "http://www.mtbachelor.com/@@/cams/wvskycam.jpg"
Function SaveBinaryData(FileName, ByteArray)
Const adTypeBinary = 1
Const adSaveCreateOverWrite = 2
Dim BinaryStream
Set BinaryStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
BinaryStream.Type = adTypeBinary
BinaryStream.Open
BinaryStream.Write ByteArray
BinaryStream.SaveToFile FileName, adSaveCreateOverWrite
End Function
Function BinaryGetURL(URL)
Dim Http
Set Http = CreateObject("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1")
Http.Open "GET", URL, False
Http.Send
BinaryGetURL = Http.ResponseBody
End Function
Function doSave()
Dim image, fName, p_month, p_day, p_hour, p_minute, p_second
image = BinaryGetURL(imageURL)
p_month = padZero(Month(Now))
p_day = padZero(Day(Now))
p_hour = padZero(Hour(Now))
p_minute = padZero(Minute(Now))
p_second = padZero(Second(Now))
fName = p_month & "_" & p_day & "_" & Year(Now) & "-" & p_hour & "_" & p_minute & "_" & p_second & ".jpg"
SaveBinaryData fName,image
End Function
Function padZero(val)
If(Len(val) < 2) Then
val = "0" & val
End If
padZero = val
End Function
doSave()
Copy and paste the above script into an empty text file. Go find a webcam you’d like to capture. When viewing the webcam image, right click and copy the images URL. Change the imageURL variable at the top of the script. Save the script (.vbs extension). Next you’ll need to set up an automated task to run the script. For help on how to set up tasks, check out this KB article. You’ll want to schedule it run somewhat frequently, but no more frequent than the webcam updates.
That’s pretty much all you need to do. If everything goes right, image files should start appearing in the directory that the script is located.
To create a movie from the sequence, you’ll need to find some software to do that. Out of sheer laziness, I just use QuickTime Pro, but there’s a bunch of shareware/freeware options available out there.
I don’t want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want a tickle
‘Cause I’d rather ride on my motorsickle
And I don’t want to die
Just want to ride on my motorcy…cle
The Business Software Alliance is offering up to $1 million to whistle blowers who report software piracy and organizations are paying record fines for noncompliance. From initial fines to further audits from individual vendors, being found in noncompliance can be costly. So what help is there out there?
Centennial License Manager is a web-based software license compliance solution that helps you quickly reconcile license entitlement to software usage on your network. Not only can it help your licensing position, it can help you save money as well by showing instances where you may be over licensed.
Posting has been a bit sparse lately as I’ve been seriously busy with work. I also just returned from a trip to the UK for work.
It was the first time I’d ever been to the UK, or even Europe for that matter. It was a short visit unfortunately and I can’t wait to get back and explore some more.
I loved London - the busyness, the people, the architecture - all good stuff. I was only in London for an evening, but got to see some of the more touristy things like Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, Parliament and Big Ben, which was all cool.
Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan have come up with a method for “retargeting” photos. An algorithm is used to detect horizontal and vertical seams of pixels with the least gradient magnitude. This path of pixels can then be removed from the photo, shrinking it in size, but preserving the rest of the photo. To increase the size of the photo, pixels are added along the determined seam.
You can view a higher resolution movie at Ariel Shamir web site. There is also a pdf available, however server speeds prevented me from actually downloading it.
dsHistory internally works somewhat similar to the other history solutions that exist, but it is implemented more like dojo’s bind than anything else. It requires no supporting libraries, it checks in at just over 7kb when compressed, and it is easy to use. The history is thought of as a series of events that have functions attached to them, and the bookmarkable window hash data is designed to be controlled independently from the events (if it is even utilized at all, which I’ve found isn’t desired at times).
The @tomic XML-RPC client requires ExtJS 1.1, but has no other external requirements. It’s designed to be easy-to-use, flexible, and robust enough for anything you might throw at it. Since this is an initial release, I’m putting it out as a beta (under the GPL).
Ext.onReady( function()
{
var xmlrpc = new Atomic.util.XMLRPC( {
url: "xmlrpc.php",
method: "blogger.getUsersBlogs"
} );
// Add parameters to the RPC call
xmlrpc.addParameter( "0123456789ABCDEF" );
xmlrpc.addParameter( "MyUsername" );
xmlrpc.addParameter( "mypassword" );
// Subscribe to events
xmlrpc.addListener( "success", function( xhr, xml ) {
// Handle the response from the XML-RPC service, which is in the 'xml' object
console.log( xml );
} );
xmlrpc.addListener( "fault", function( xhr, fault ) {
// Handle any faults issued by the XML-RPC server
Ext.MessageBox.alert( "XML-RPC fault #" + fault.code, fault.message );
} );
// make the call
xmlrpc.call( {
method: "blogger.getUsersBlogs",
params: [
"0123456789ABCDEF",
"MyUsername",
"mypassword"
]
} );
}
Karsten Obarski invented 1987 - twenty years ago - the MOD format for his Ultimate Tracker running on Amiga computers. Since then, countless songs are created, especially for the demoscene.
MODs have special attributes. All samples are stored in 8bits and the number of voices is limited to four. To have something similarly to chords, the three notes of it are repeated very fast. This makes MODs sound so freaky.
Helping the handicap and assisting astronauts is cool and all, but what about as a TV remote? Just think, you’d never have to waste your precious energy pushing those remote control buttons any more. If the consequence of sloth is only a pit full of snakes, bring it on.
I was expecting the worst, but got everything up and running in about 30 minutes due to some damn easy to follow tutorials. I guess I probably could have figured it out myself, but it’s nice to just get it done.
